Longtime Alnavco customer Jon
Sumida has provide us with
some photos and techniques for WWI ship
modifications.
Jon is a published author and
professor of
history at the University of Maryland.

Jon's words about the modifications:

The major modification project was Orion out of
KGV (they are in the
2nd BS 2nd division). The KGV had to be cut in
half and shortened
amidships and at the stern. The superstructure
was built up from
wire, scrap, plastic rod, brass tubing slices,
and card--note
especially the screens around the boat well.
Considerable work was
also required to make the Hercules out of
Neptune, and modifying
Neptune to be Neptune was also non-trivial.

But arguably the most arduous project was making
the Lions work. For
this I had to make new funnels out of aluminum
tubing, modify the
superstructure with plastic scrap and card, and
most difficult of
all, hollow out the boat well.
The ships were painted to match the home fleet
dark gray of the Home
Fleet in 1914. This gives the ships a very
different demeanor than
the medium gray of the war after the fall of
1914.

In general, I found replacing the cast masts
with wire and cleaning
up the molding flaws resulted in very convincing
representations.

For your information, I am publishing a long
article on British
naval tactics from 1914 to 1916 in the upcoming
Naval War College
Review (Summer 2007). This is a refinement of
arguments published in
the 2003 Journal of Military History "A Matter
of Timing: The Royal
Navy and the Tactics of Decisive Battle,
1912-1916."

Yours sincerely,
Jon Sumida

A few photographs of Jon Sumida's work:
Please click on any image for a larger view.